• jpreston2005@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    amid increasing concerns that the lack of a ban on use is promoting drug abuse by young people.

    This fucking backwards ass notion of weed as a “gateway drug” needs to die. Their reasoning for calling it that shows their idiocy, in that it’s called that because it’s cheap and harmless, so they think it will lead to people believing other drugs are similar. Imagine branding something as dangerous because it’s (Checks Notes) cheap and harmless.

    Although from personal experience, I’d say that weed is a gateway drug of sorts, in that if you’re addicted to something far more dangerous (like alcohol), using weed can act like a “gateway” to sobriety.

    • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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      3 months ago

      And yet alcohol shall not be banned.

      What are they thinking?

      • CitizenKong@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        And unlike cannabis use (as far as I’m aware), alcoholism is actually a real problem in Japan, because drinking alcohol is not only socially acceptable but downright enforced.

        • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          It’s even worse, because over a third of Japanese are allergic to alcohol and probably shouldn’t be consuming for increased health risk.

          • CitizenKong@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            I know what you mean, but it’s not an allergy but the lack of a gene to metabolize alcohol properly. So it’s more comparable to lactose intolerance (which over 70 percent of Asians also have).

            • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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              3 months ago

              It’s not an “allergy”, but it still has detrimental health effects. Not having the enzyme greatly increases cancers related to drinking, among many other health impacts.

              Allergy is just a way to explain it more simply.

    • krashmo@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      In my experience weed can be a gateway drug when you have to buy it from a drug dealer. As an analogy, lots of people end up buying something other than what they went into Target to buy.

      • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        Also a criminal record can fuck your life in a myriad of ways, if like me you fall in love with someone from another country and you both have weed charges neither country will let you live together even decades later destroying what’s probably your only chance at happiness.

        These rules are needlessly cruel and absurd.

    • Shard@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Welcome to Japan, where everything, especially their mentality is fatally stuck in the glory days of the 1970/1980s.

      Even today they still use fax and computer usage is the office middling and general computer literacy is abyssal.

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      It’s Japan. If anything is promoting drug abuse, it’s the work culture.

    • Maeve@kbin.earth
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      3 months ago

      It’s not entirely harmless, but more harmless than a lot of OTC medicines.